Morning Scan

Oil above $90, prediction markets crossing $50B in monthly volume, and Netflix dropping $587M on a Ben Affleck AI startup — it's a Monday morning that suggests money is moving fast and in strange directions.

$587M — What Netflix paid in cash for InterPositive, Ben Affleck's AI filmmaking startup — a number that turns "Hollywood pivot to AI" from metaphor into line item. (TechCrunch)

Connected World

Global Oil Price Crosses $90 a Barrel as U.S.-Iran Conflict Widens (paywall)

Brent crude up 3%+ in a single session, with S&P futures barely moving — markets are pricing in the conflict without fully panicking, which is its own kind of unease. (NYT)

Apple's Latest Price Increases Go Beyond Macs and iPads

After last month's Mac and iPad hikes, Apple is back for another round — at some point "tariff pass-through" becomes pricing strategy. (MacRumors)

China's 11-Year Lithium-Ion Tax Break Is Ending

The subsidy regime that helped build the global EV battery industry is winding down — watch for ripple effects on battery costs. (Substack)

Machines & Minds

Everything You Need to Know About Kimi K3, the Latest Model From China to Shake Up AI

Moonshot's 2.8-trillion-parameter Kimi K3 is performing on par with Anthropic's Opus 4 — the gap between US and Chinese frontier models keeps falling short of what American labs would prefer. (Big Technology)

Alibaba Previews Qwen3.8, Claims It's Second Only to Claude Fable 5

A 2.4-trillion-parameter model that Alibaba is promising to open-weight "soon" — Chinese labs are increasingly using open releases as competitive leverage. (SiliconANGLE)

“You can use Kimi K3 on Moonshot AI's website today, much as you can use ChatGPT or Claude.” — Nate's Substack, on the gap between "downloadable" and "runnable" for a model this size

Connected World

Netflix Paid $587M for Ben Affleck's AI Filmmaking Startup

InterPositive is now the most expensive Hollywood-AI bet to go public — and it resets the baseline for what studios think this category is worth. (TechCrunch)

Common Sense Media Says Google's AI Search Poses an "Unacceptable Risk" to Students

Google can't turn it off for school accounts, which means the "unacceptable risk" is also unavoidable. (The Next Web)

Israel's $50M Influence Campaign Included Millions of AI-Driven Texts and a $45M+ Contract With Brad Parscale (paywall)

A detailed look at what an AI-amplified foreign influence operation actually looks like at scale — and how normalized the infrastructure for it has become. (WSJ)

Kalshi and Polymarket Bets on the FIFA World Cup Final Top $5.69B

Total wagers on both platforms crossed $50B for the first time in June — prediction markets just had their Super Bowl moment, and regulators are surely taking notes. (NYT)

Connected World

'The Odyssey' Brings in $124.5 Million at the Box Office (paywall)

A nearly three-hour Christopher Nolan epic opening to $124.5M is a rare counterargument that theaters aren't dead — they just needed a reason to exist. (NYT)